What We've Been Up to: Valentine's Day and Recycling

We've taken a break from Five in a Row for the past couple of weeks (after getting only one book under our belts!) due to the library here never having any of the books that I'm looking to row. The library where we used to live was huge and amazing. The one here is just... lame. So out of frustration I ended up ordering all of the FIAR books that I plan to use this year and next (thanks to my wonderful husband for understand and not blinking an eye when I told him how much it would cost!) so we will be back to rowing this week!

While I was dealing with library frustration and subsequently waiting for my box of books to arrive in the mail we focused on two other topics: Valentine's Day and recycling.
First up was Valentine's Day. We read a few new books:



We also did most of the activities from last year's trays and recreated, with a few new additions, last year's sensory tub. It's so fun to see how each child plays with sensory tubs in their own way. Buzz set up a store for Boo and I to shop at with the different items. Boo liked sorting everything and Bean liked pouring things between the different cups, bowls and buckets.





I also made homemade chocolate playdough. Bean loved to smell it and made everyone else smell it every time we played with it too. I saw this idea on Counting Coconuts.

I made binders for Buzz and Boo filled with Valentine themed worksheets. I found most of them at Activity Village. I also made a few math worksheets and some crack-the-code worksheets that Buzz loved!

We also tried an activity called read and write the room for the first time with this unit and both Buzz and Boo loved it! I think I first heard about it at 1+1+1=1. Basically you hang different vocabulary words (I used math problems for Buzz) around the room and the child copies the words (or problems and answers) onto a provided worksheet attached to a clip board. So fun!

Buzz has been working on meeting all of the requirements to earn his Wolf badge in Cub Scouts and this past week one of the things we had to do was read books about recycling and conservation, then discuss. We chose:



These books got Buzz very interested in the topic and he wanted to learn more. We read about where garbage goes and how glass, plastic and paper are recycled in our Giant Science Resource Book.

Then we watched the Magic School Bus Holiday Special. It's all about recycling and how important it is. It may be available through your library, but we just watched it on YouTube.

Here's the link if anyone is interested